Should Men Look As Good As Women?

great expectations

Since stepping it up, I've had the occasional woman tell me I smell good or comment favorably on my shirt, but they're not surprised. It's not like they're thinking, Wow, it's about time he hung up the sweatpants and retired the baseball cap. On the contrary, they expect this level of decorum from me, from you, from all of us.

I'm being forced to work twice as hard for a fraction of attention, but I guess some is better than none. When I leave the house, I'm surrounded by multitudes of well-dressed, well-groomed automatons who, like me, still begrudge the fact that somebody raised the bar on the male ideal while they were fast asleep.

In the aftermath of the rude awakening comes the sense that trying to look as good as women is a near impossible feat. They have an uncanny ability to draw stares, notwithstanding great or average looks. They have flowing hair, ours recedes. They have natural curves, we have gym memberships. They can entice with ample cleavage, we can disgust with abundant chest hair.

lessons learned

I've learned that sticking to a program designed by somebody who spends their days racking my weights makes me look better in clothes — a potential first step in getting a woman out of hers.

I've learned to reduce dressing to its most basic elemental form, which serves the dual purpose of ease and expediency: Dressy and casual, perfect and imperfect.

The Perfect Look The perfect look is slick. It's the most expensive dark suit you can afford; a tailored pair of slacks and dress shirt, a thin merino or cashmere sweater, and classic leather shoes. It's spending a little more on items you know are going to last.

The Imperfect Look The imperfect look is paired down and slightly unkempt. It's a cool pair of stonewashed jeans, an untucked shirt that doesn't drape below the mid-thigh, a solid color, casual sweater, a fitted T, and a few days' growth. It's shopping at stores whose prices end in eight.

The upside to this entire fiasco, on those days when my glass is half full, is that the exercise will probably make me healthier and the extra time spent grooming should help me look my best. The downside is I'm not sure who I'm doing it for.

I still don't think men should look as good as women. I still don't think we can. I do think, however, that we need to look our absolute best, or else face the wrath of a very vain world. You know, the same one women have been living in all along.